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The Summer of 1940: The Little Ships at Dunkirk by Peter Stanford The catastrophe that left the British Expeditionary Force floundering helplessly amid the sand dunes and abandoned vacation cottages of the French shore at Dunkirk was set in motion on May I 0, when Colonel General Heinz Guderian 's panzerkarnpfwagens, the tanks of the l st, 2nd and I 0th Armored Divisions, crossed from Germany into Luxemburg in a slashing attack that was to carry them straight through, ten days later, to the Engli sh Channel. The French High Command was paralyzed by the devastating pace and fury of the German attack, delivered as it was in a weak point in their lines where they had neve r dreamed the Germans would try to break through. General Gamelin issued an urgent but not very helpful order of the day, "The flood of German tanks must be stopped!" This mightily amused Guderian' s men when they captured a copy of the order, for they knew the French and British fielded some 4,000 tanks to their 2500. And what was called for was not stopping the German spearheads, but cutting them off. The Frerich General De Gaulle tried twice to drive his tanks across the shaft of the German spear, in desperate, ill-coordinated attacks without infantry support. Britain 's Lord Gort a few days later, on May 21, launched a tank charge driving down on the salient from the north , at Arras. The British tanks hit hard enough to shake up Rommel's Seventh Panzer Divisionin response to which Guderian was ordered to pull his Tenth Panzer into reserve. The Tenth Panzer had had orders to roll upthecoastandoccupy Dunkirkwide open to attack at that point. Further delays in the German attack were ordered to conserve tank forces and give the German Air Force a chance to wipe out the British so ldiers crowding down upon the open beaches at Dunkirk, the last point of access to the sea. But the destruction could not be fully accomplished from the air, and for a period of ten days, while the watching world held its breath, a mixed armada of light warships dashed in to pick up the men of the BEF. In their wake came coastal steamers carrying gaunt-eyed soldiers instead of their accustomed holiday crowds, accompanied by tugs, fishing vessels, motor launches, even Thames barges. The Miracle of Dunkirk was underway. By June4, 368,628 troops were lifted out of France, under a hail of German bombs, machine-gunning from the air, 10
and artillery fire from German tanks turned loose at last to overcome lastditch resistance and seize the town . Nearly a quarter of a million of these were British-soldiers vitally needed then to defend England against invasion. France was driven out of the war. Of 693 British ships involved in the evacuation (code-named Operation Dynamo) , 226 were sunk, including six precious destroyers. The British Army had been terribly mauled, losing its gun s, tanks and transport. But not the men! And those men in the corning months were to be the only army in the world holding the battle line against Hitler's armies. 0
D etroyers and fast steamers ca m e in alongside the Dunkirk mole to take aboard Below, a defeated army awaits its fat e. Only the weary , hungry men of Lord Gort' s cut-off small craft could get in to pluck these men off army. In some cases the ove1jlow piled into the beach--and 170 were lost in the attempt. small craji nestled alongside. But they saved 98,780 men!
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:--¡ A sturdy fishing vessel carries a load of men out of the bombed and burning port. " Wars are not won by evacuations," Churchill sternly reminded the English-hut these men li ved tofight another day, and just four years later would he heading hack this way.
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